THE BOLD YEAR// offswitch magazine, volume two

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I went to my first concert just over a year ago.


I had gotten tickets for my brother for Christmas and the plan was that I'd take the bus to Boston to visit and we'd go together.


I remember that Saturday night: our late dinner ordered in, the cold air blanketing the city, the feeling that i had not a single thing to wear--what does one wear to concerts? I finally settled on a black shift dress and my Frye motorbike boots. We entered the small venue--standing room only--and found a spot close to the stage. Connor got us drinks and then we waited, remarking mostly on how lucky we were to be tall (tall is good where no seats are concerned) and how we were not the usual hipster crowd (in a sea of beanies our heads went hatless).


We were there to see The Head and the Heart. 


Now, I can just imagine readers all over, nodding their heads, of course, of course, The Head and the Heart. But just over a year ago they were virtually unknown. Just over a year ago they were the opening band for someone else. And when we saw them, just over a year ago, no one knew the words to sing along--no one had heard of them. But their music was heaven. And so Connor and I stood there, drinks in hand, bobbing and swaying, as the music moved through and up, as the air was charged with the sound and the guttural need of those voices.


And that was it. I was sold. Hook line and sinker, or however the expression goes.


When I returned to New York I began buying up cheap tickets for fringe (I use that word very loosely) bands playing smaller venues. I saw Noah & the Whale at The Bowery Ballroom. Beirut at The Wellmont. The Lumineers at The Mercury Lounge. Slowly and surely over the course of the year I refined my taste in music and began to chart the city as i did so--venturing into downtown neighborhoods and once foreign boroughs--mapping city and self, unfurling New York and my place in it.

At some point it became very clear: I was made bold by a year of listening to live music.


But how or why i was made bold by this was still unknown--well, maybe not unknown, but certainly beyond words.


It was just about a week ago I went out with some girlfriends I hadn't seen in quite a while and I was explaining all of this and what bands I loved and why and what about their music made my weary heart thrum when my friend Vivienne took a deep breath and said, All of the music in my library was given to me by friends and ex-boyfriends--mostly ex-boyfriends.  


Ah, ex-boyfriends. I've come to realize that in every relationship I've ever had--first loves, half-loves, reluctant flirtations--music plays a part. The passing of the mix-tape might as well be a relationship marker. Music and men. To this day I can't listen to Nick Drake without feeling a sadness and longing for one Sunday in December in which I both lost and found the very best parts of myself on the couch of my first love. 


I'll never forget sitting on the floor of my first boyfriend's apartment. I was just out of high-school, new to New York and terrified by nearly everything. I sat on his floor surrounded by record sleeves and pictures of him and I was quite sure that I wasn't actually keen on him, but I had yet to really wake to that though. He picked up an Ella Fitzgerald album: Ella, she's the one, you know? She's my one. She's my music. She sings and it stirs something low in me. Something i hardly know how to place. 


Who's your ella? he looked right at me and asked. 


Who is your ella? 


Who is my ella?


I hardly knew what he was talking about. I don't know. I don't think i have an ella.


Oh man, i can't wait for the day you find yours. Finding it is the best part. 


Sometimes I wonder how often that question hung over me. How often I was aware of the presence and immediate need of that question.


It took six years, but I now know.


I figured it out this last year in dark and crowded concert halls amongst nearly perfect strangers.


I found my Ella in the sounds of the folk movement coming out of London and the Pacific Northwest. I found my Ella in the broken voices of Charlie Fink and Kristian Matsson. i found my Ella in the sublime dissonance--that perfect space between the Avett Brothers' voices.  In the ferocity and haunting vulnerability with which Laura Marling sings and Johnny Flynn plays the fiddle. I found my Ella in the lyrics which call upon Bukowski and Shakespeare and Hemingway for their piercing (and humblingly simple) wisdom.


I found my Ella. And in finding my Ella, I found myself.


And I did it all without a man.


My music library is made up of those songs that I love. Those songs that stir that low unknowable, unnamable part of myself. The songs that upon listening to I can't help but move and laugh and sway my hips, putting socks to wood floor. Those songs that grant, when I least expect it, a perfect, quiet moment, in which I stand just as still as I  can and cry--because someone else has given voice and melody to my great triumphs and deep tragedies--because someone else has unwrapped what I thought singular and secret.


And in those moments I am not alone. I am never lonely. I stand listening to the chant of the human experience. 



It's that knowing I'm not alone bit--that knowing that others have gone before and others will follow after--that vulnerability that makes for this human experience. That's what made me bold.

Well, that and the music. 

You, instead

in

Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 12.00.09 PMFor you,

This used to be easier, didn't it? I think it used to be easier. I'm pretty sure it was once-upon-a-time a little less hard.

I'm tired. I'm tired in that way that settles around the eyes and reveals just a little too much, a little too soon. Tired in that way that lacks imagination--that can't imagine anything changing, ever.

I've grown into my adult face. At some point between the majority of twenty-six and the last few months I got my adult face. I almost didn't notice, it's a really subtle change. My cheeks are so full (and yes,  I'm sure as I age I'll be ever-more-grateful for just how big they are) but they are ever-so-slightly-less-big, ever-so-slightly-less-full. The outline of my face is a little bit leaner, a little bit harder.

I went out with some girlfriends recently and we had one of those New York nights that's governed by nothing more than the overriding principle of what-the-hell. And so when two Croatian "aesthetic" surgeons (specializing in rhinoplasty) sat down next to us, we let them. And when they toppled a single glass of wine with little left, we allowed them to buy three more. And when they guessed our ages (accurately) I then demanded to know just how it was they knew I was two years older. And the one said, The lines on either side of your mouth are deeper.

He might have used more clinical, professional (accurate) terms, but I knew what he meant.

It became one of the jokes of the weekend--me and my deepening smile lines.

It did used to be easier.

I've run out of things to say. Or maybe just the courage to say them. Yes, maybe that's it. Maybe it's that I've forgotten what it felt like to do this--to write, to imagine, to leap into a future without small and unkind people saying small and unkind things--not the doctor, but the people who come and read these words and think me so terrible because of them.

I know this feeling will pass. And I know I'll get my courage back. And I know I'll figure out how to care a little less about the small cruelties of others. But today I do. And today it's hard.

The thing is, I like my deepening smile lines. I like my older, now adult face. And so maybe it does get harder, and maybe am I little more tired, but maybe those things are just products of reaching in the direction of the life I want.

Of which you are a part.

So forget the small and unkind and cruel naysayers, I'll take you instead.

Yours

 

WHAT I'M EATING// shaved brussels sprouts

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SHAVED BRUSSELS SPROUTS
SHAVED BRUSSELS SPROUTS (as inspired by the menu at buvette)

There's a small French gastroteque in New York's West Village that I absolutely love. When two of my lovely, but non-residing-New-York-friends came to visit last week it was the first place I suggested. And it was again the local of choice this weekend when my dear friend Ashlea returned to the city after two months away on the Cape. (The food is delicious, the decor is endlessly inviting, and the attractive men behind the bar don't hurt).

They serve, among other things, a pesto dish that I am convinced tastes like a doughnut (a doughnut being the highest level of food perfection, in my book). But what I left thinking about this last time was their shaved brussels sprouts dish--mostly because I thought, you know, I bet I could make something like this (and I bet it would be quite healthy and inexpensive). 

Trader Joe's sells a bag of prepackaged shaved brussels sprouts that I cut up just a wee bit more. I then added parmesan cheese, toasted (always, always toasted--it brings out the flavor) pine nuts, and a bit of olive oil and sea salt.

That's it! Five ingredients.

(Note: pine nuts are as expensive as liquid gold so I suggest buying them in bulk at Costco, Sam's Club, or Trader Joe's. Buvette's dish uses walnuts as their nut of choice, so that's always an option).